There is a service I use that doesn’t get enough credit. The service acts as your permanent billing address, bill payer, and bill minder. Anyone you receive a bill from you point to your PayTrust address. Then PayTrust ensures any invoices received get paid on time and reminds you if you haven’t paid a bill or received an expected statement. If they receive something which cannot be scanned such as a credit card, they forward it to your current mailing address.
Here’s what I like about it:
- Cheap! Only $9.95/mo.
- Multiple funding sources (e.g. any checking account you want to use such as your brokerage account or traditional bank checking account)
- Late bill reminders, if no statement received with-in N number of days of your last one.
- Permanent billing address (PO BOX 1819*****, SIOUX FALLS, SD, 57186) that doesn’t change when you move.
- Paperless. All mail gets scanned and is available on their site for viewing or download.
- View new or existing bills while out of town. I can go out of town for a month and not worry about anything.
- Integrates with Mint.com “Real Balance” so you can see what your available account balances are. Kind of basic, but still a good thing.
- Does both E-Bills and paper bills. E-bills is where it logs into the account and downloads the PDFs for you (go green!)
- Backed by Intuit & been around for more than 10 years, so it feels more legit than some small little startup.
- I get almost no advertisements in the mail as they all go to PayTrust and get shredded.
- 24 hour phone support and no wait times. It’s almost like a direct line into their offices.
- They research any payment issues such as payment not received or missing statements
- They don’t float your money. Money leaves your account the day the check clears, not a few days before like normal banks do with online bill pay.
- I use it as your billing address for “private” registration for DNS.
- I receive CD once a year with all my bills that I hold on to for safe-keeping and store in Evernote.
- Automatically pay statements with variable monthly amounts such as a gas bill (No bank offered Bill Pay service can do that!)
- Pay exactly what you want to pay. For example, pay off your monthly credit card bill so long as it is under your maximum threshold.
- No need to update 50 vendors with your new credit card the next time you lose it or it expires.
- No need to login to multiple sites to manage your automatic payment profiles. Manage them all on PayTrust.
* I received no credit or commission for this post.
DO I UNDERSTAND THAT PAYTRUST INFORMATION CAN BE DOWNLOADED INTO MINT SO THAT ACCOUNT BALANCES IN MINT CAN BE KEPT CURRENT?
Yes, account balances will update via your mint account. However, the balances are only updated on demand. I don’t use this feature.
Yes, this is supported by PayTrust.
Hi, I’m trying to figure out if I want to use PayTrust and ran across your blog. Have you ever had trouble with your credit card purchases because of the billing address (being an out-of-state p.o. box)? They ask for a lot of private information at sign up (Social Security number and photo ID) and I’m wondering how secure their service is. Your review is glowing, do you mind if I ask how long you’ve used them and if you’ve ever had any issues? Thanks!
I’ve been using PayTrust for one and half years. I have moved every bill to the service, even the one from my accountant! That means credit cards, utilities, cable, gym memberships, etc all go to PayTrust. I’ve had no problems with the out-of-state address. It just requires that I remember which zip-code to use when asked for verification purposes. Things like physical credit cards have been properly forwarded to my physical address.
About the only problem I’ve had is with their ability to do eBills with Bank of America, so I’ve switched it back to paper bills that go to my PayTrust PO BOX.
As for all the PII, the fact that they were owned by Intuit gave me a little peace of mind. As an long-time Mint.com member, using PayTrust was a natural compliment for minding my bills. Additionally, I subscribe to credit monitoring services so I am aware of any compromises of my identity quickly.
It’s not the billing address that is changed to the PO box. It’s the mailing address. Your billing address is still you home address. I’ve only had issues with one merchant that couldn’t understand the difference between a mailing address and billing address.
I’m using Paytrust since 1997. I wouldn’t manage without it.
Just for clarification, it is the billing address.
I think what you’re referring to is their SmartBills feature which enables you to leave the address associated with their supported vendors the same since they login to the vendor website and pull down your statements. However, technically the address you receive bills at is your billing address. Thus, PayTrust.com will fulfill this requirement.
Per the PayTrust.com FAQs:
Have used this service for more than 10 years. Outstanding service and more.
I have used Paytrust since it’s very beginning. Solid service and the only one I know of with all of those features. My only complaint is it has not been updated in quite a while. It would be nice to see it evolve more.
I’ve used Paytrust for 12 years. Extremely satisfied except for one feature that I miss: Smart Balance. Did you say that it still works for you? Not for me. Wish it would be available again.
Yes, they refer to it as “View Real Balance”. You’ll find it on the menu on the left hand side of the page under “Funding Accounts”. You’ll need to manually push the button to refresh the list and it requires that you link your PayTrust account up with your Mint.com account.
I have used Paytrust since the late 90′s as well. I generally love it. It was owned by Metavante which is well known bank services/processor and was part of M&I Bank, so I always had trust in the company even before Intuit acquired it.
However, in the last few months, I’ve had problems with my bills not being retrieved ontime. Today for the first time in NINE years, I had a late fee charged to my Amex because Paytrust did not retrieve the bill on time.
Also, the email response time is typically one to two WEEKS. You have to call to get anything done and hold times are glacial at best.
And you can’t twitter to @paytrust, because it doesn’t look like it’s monitored.